John Kelly Jokes (?) That Working for Donald Trump Must Be a Punishment from God

It's been a trying couple of weeks for White House chief of staff and noted traitor apologist John Kelly, whose shameless defense of a known domestic abuser has caused many to wonder if his tenure in the administration is drawing to a close. In remarks delivered to Department of Homeland Security personnel on Thursday, Kelly—who left his post as DHS secretary to accept his current gig—sounded downright wistful, not unlike a man who accepts a polite invitation to his ex's wedding and feels perfectly fine until the moment he sees her walking down the aisle, at which point it dawns on him that he has made a terrible mistake.

"I miss every one of you every day," he began, the light visibly disappearing from his eyes with each pained syllable. As the moderator roared with laughter, Kelly rolled his eyes and allowed himself a rueful chuckle, perhaps in order to head off the burgeoning sobs that threatened to escape his throat at any moment. "The last thing I wanted to do was walk away from one of the great honors of my life, being the secretary of Homeland Security," he added, silently willing someone—anyone—in the audience to extraction-team him to some faraway tropical paradise in which he never has to engage with Donald Trump in a physical tug-of-war for control of a phone again. "But I did something wrong, and God punished me, I guess."

Kelly has responded to previous rumors of his impending departure by issuing halfhearted, self-loathing denials in which he insists that he is "not frustrated" and is, in fact, quite happy with the life decisions he's made up to this point. Now, though, as rumors persist that he is locked in a "death match" power struggle with Jared and Ivanka—whose familial relationship with the president means they're not losing any death matches anytime soon—those types of claims are going to get much tougher to countenance. You might even gaze upon that weary, mournful face and start to feel sorry for him, until you remember that Kelly is a xenophobic enabler of xenophobes, and that he has no one but himself to blame for his predicament.

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You know the old line about how the funniest jokes aren't really "jokes" at all?

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